双边关系专用性投资如何影响合作创新绩效?

How do Bilateral Relationship-specific Investments Affect Cooperative Innovation Performance?A Multilevel Moderated Mediation Model

本文将双边关系专用性投资、机会主义效应、知识协同效应和治理机制纳入一个整合分析框架,探究双边关系专用性投资对合作创新绩效的影响机理。以吉林、辽宁和江苏等地435家企业为样本,综合运用结构方程模型分析和Bootstrap检验等方法,对相关假设进行检验。结果表明,双边关系专用性投资不仅能直接提升合作创新绩效,还能通过机会主义效应和知识协同效应的并列中介作用间接提升合作创新绩效;机会主义效应对知识协同效应具有负向影响;正式合同和关系准则均对双边关系专用性投资与机会主义效应的关系具有正向调节作用,关系准则对双边关系专用性投资与知识协同效应的关系也具有正向调节作用,而正式合同的调节作用则不显著。

With the development of information technology,more and more enterprises have engaged knowledge integration activities across traditional organizational boundaries,and cooperative innovation has become the main form of technological innovation in enterprises.Cooperative innovation refers to the process in which enterprises create innovative performance by sharing resource.The essence of cooperative innovation is different companies providing superior resources and complementing each other.The establishment of cooperative relationships requires the partners to contribute their own superior resources.Relationship-specific investment is one of the main form of such superior resources.Relationship-specific investment refers to an asset that an enterprise invests in a specific cooperative project.When the cooperative project terminated,the value of the asset will be greatly reduced or even disappeared.In general,the existing research has paid more attention to the unilateral relationship-specific rather than the bilateral relationship-specific investment.Existing literature has discussed the impact of bilateral relationship-specific investment on cooperative innovation performance from the perspective of inhibiting opportunism or promoting knowledge sharing,but there are few studies which link the opportunism,knowledge collaboration and cooperative innovation performance.Moreover,many scholars studied the inhibitory effects of governance mechanisms such as formal contracts and relational norms on opportunism.Few studies focus on the role of governance mechanisms in promoting knowledge collaboration.Therefore,this paper integrates bilateral relationship-specific investment,knowledge collaboration,opportunism and governance mechanisms into an analysis framework,to explore the influence mechanism ofbilateral relationship-specific investmentoncooperative innovation performance based on transaction cost theory and resource-based theory.Firstly,we explore the impact of bilateral relationship-specific investment on cooperative innovation performance with knowledge collaboration and opportunism as dual mediators.Secondly,we dissect the influence of opportunism on knowledge collaboration.After that,we try to analyze the moderating effect of two typical governance mechanisms,formal contract and relational norm,on the relationship between bilateral relationship-specific investment and opportunism(knowledge collaboration).Finally we test the hypotheses using structural equation model analysis and hierarchical regression analysis.The result shows:firstly,bilateral relationship-specific investment could not only enhance the performance of cooperative innovation directly,but also enhance cooperative innovation performance through the dual mediatingeffect of opportunism and knowledge collaboration indirectly.Secondly,opportunism has a negative effect on knowledge collaboration.Thirdly,both formal contract and relationalnormhave a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between bilateral relationship-specific investment and opportunism.Fourthly,relational normal so has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between bilateral relationship-specific investment and knowledge collaboration,while the moderating effect of formal contract is not significant.There are several theoretical contributions in this study.Firstly,this paper explores the impact of bilateral relationship-specific investment on cooperative innovation performance with knowledge collaboration and opportunism as dual mediators,which enriches the research in the field of bilateral relationship-specific investment.Secondly,this paper analyzes the moderating effect of formal contract and relational norm on the relationship between bilateral relationship-specific investment and opportunism(knowledge collaboration),which makes the study of governance mechanisms more comprehensive and deeper.Finally,this paper integrates bilateral relationship-specific investment,cooperative innovation performance,opportunism and governance mechanisms into an analysis framework,which makes up the deficiencies of lacking of comprehensive research on the bilateral relationship-specific investmentand cooperative innovation performance.